Upsets In Illinois Give Nation Food For Thought

On the day that Bill Clinton wins the presidential primary by just about the exact margin predicted by the latest polls, the rest of the Illinois political world goes mildly wacky.

- One of the most successful and popular politicians in the state`s history gets blown out of office by an under-financed black woman hardly anybody had ever heard of six months ago.

- In this most tightly controlled political city, one veteran incumbent congressman fails to get renominated and a second is on the verge of defeat. The one falls to a former Rhodes scholar; the second is losing to the former defense minister of the Black Panthers.

- Two other incumbent congressmen lose, albeit to other incumbents, and 10 members of the Legislature-five from each party-are beaten.

Although all this only happened in Illinois, it is likely to be the topic of some heated and troubled discussions starting Wednesday morning in Washington, where several politicians of both parties might well have trouble digesting their breakfasts.

This was the first state that held a real primary, top to bottom. Those other places just had special presidential primaries; they nominate everyone else later. This one was for everything from president to water commissioner, and the results are, if nothing else, confusing.

It isn`t that there is no possible explanation for these and other unexpected results. It`s just that none of the explanations withstand scrutiny.

A public mood of anti-incumbency? Well, a lot of incumbents lost.

But then what about the incumbents who won? In all the country, no incumbent is more incumbent, more a part of the congressional power structure, than Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who easily turned back Dick Simpson.

And suburban Republican Rep. Phil Crane, a veteran congressman who was attacked for hardly ever visiting his district, also won.

Furthermore, each incumbent who lost had some special problems. Rep. Gus Savage, who lost to Mel Reynolds, was a controversial, race-conscious and sometimes downright irrational confrontationist who angered white voters in his South Side district, which had a smaller black majority than in the past. Charles Hayes, far milder than Savage, was also less of a presence, making him vulnerable to the challenge from Bobby Rush. Hayes may have been damaged at the end by the news that he had written bad checks at the now-defunct House bank.

But long before that was known, the challenger had won the endorsement of the potent organization of the 19th Ward. So old-fashioned Chicago neighborhood politics may have played as big a role as media-hyped pseudo-scandal.

And in the big one, in Sen. Alan Dixon`s surprise loss to Carol Mosely Braun, there were many factors, not least of which were the weeks of strong anti-Dixon television commercials put on by the third candidate in the race, Al Hofeld.

Braun was the beneficiary of Hofeld`s attacks, which seem to have damaged the attacker as well as their target, leaving Braun as the only candidate who was not tarnished.

And she was probably also the beneficiary of the single most controversial, and puzzling, vote of Dixon`s long career: his support last fall of Clarence Thomas`s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Braun won because of women, including suburban and downstate women. In the city, she got the vote that any capable black candidate could expect to get. What the exit polls indicate is that the votes nobody expected her to get were from white women in the Cook County suburbs, in the collar counties and even downstate.

Many of these women, it seems, were Republicans. Absolved from the responsibility to vote in their own party`s primary by Patrick Buchanan`s decision not to make a major effort in Illinois, some of them took Democratic ballots to express gender solidarity or distaste for Dixon, or both.

Republicans who decided to become Democrats-for-a-day also had a hand in defeating Savage, whose anti-white, and especially anti-Jewish, remarks over the years had made him an embarrassment to many, especially in the suburban parts of his district. In the normally Republican precincts, thousands of voters asked for Democratic ballots, and Savage`s opponent, Reynolds, won overwhelmingly in those areas.

The female bulge in the Democratic electorate may have had some peripheral impact. Two Democratic state legislators, Lee Preston and Al Ronan, lost thier primaries to women challengers who probably benefited from the turnout for Braun along the lakefront. Ronan especially was a symbol of non-ideological, pragmatic politics-as-usual.

But Democrats and men were not the only losers. State Rep. Penny Pullen, a leading conservative and foe of abortions, lost to a moderate Republican woman.